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Gendered War and Gendered Peace: Truth Commissions and Postconflict Gender Violence: Lessons From South Africa
Abstract
That war is profoundly gendered has long been recognized by feminist international relations scholars. What is less recognized is that the postwar period is equally gendered. Currently undertheorized is how truth-seeking exercises in the aftermath of conflict should respond to this fact. What happens to women victims of war violence? The difficulties of foregrounding gendered wartime violence in truth telling are illustrated by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The article explores some consequences of the failure to uncover gendered truth, including its impact on the government's reparations policy, and continued "peacetime" violence perpetrated against women in South Africa.
... We should recognise, at this juncture, that even though we set out to collate and synthesise some of the literature on gender and humanitarian settings in Africa, as shown in the topic of this paper, not all publications that appeared in our search involved cases where humanitarian aid agencies were present. We retrieved studies on disasters including droughts (Ndenyele and Badurdeen, 2012;Quandt, 2019), health crises (Davies and Bennett, 2016;Peacock et al., 2008), post-conflict situations and displacements (Ajayi, 2020;Borer, 2009;Stark et al., 2010), and war and armed conflict (Jacobson, 1999;Miller and Moskos, 1995;Sideris, 2003). Some of the papers involve crisis situations with no clearly identified intervention or external humanitarian actor (Hollander, 2014;Touré et al., 2020). ...
... While looking explicitly at gendered issues, few of the articles adequately problematised gender or explored its intricacies beyond its characteristics as an identity marker or as a mere determiner of social affordances (Borer, 2009;Contreras-Urbina et al., 2019;Hilhorst et al., 2018;Scanlon and Muddell, 2009;Veit, 2019). Adopting a less than common approach to gender in the context of GBV, Carpenter (2006) argued that GBV against men is a potential risk that is often neglected in humanitarian response; Al Gasseer et al. (2004) assert that infants, as much as women are a crucial part of the gender and violence equation; and Dolan (2016) advocates the mainstreaming of research on GBV perpetrated against men, boys and members of the LGBTI community. ...
... Our review has revealed that while the gender dimension of sectors such as health, GBV, and livelihood in conflict and post-conflict settings has been given reasonable attention, research employing gender as an analytical frame in other humanitarian sectors including water, sanitation, and education is limited. Few programmes and studies pursued a robust analysis of gender which involves identifying local power relations, discursive constructions, and cultural contexts that shape how gender is experienced (Borer, 2009;Contreras-Urbina et al., 2019;Hilhorst et al., 2018;Jacobson, 1999;Scanlon and Muddell, 2009;Veit, 2019). Even fewer engagements with gender chart transformative mechanisms that will address the social norms that cultivate and strengthen gender inequities (Cardoso et al., 2016;Casey et al., 2020;Glass et al., 2019;Hyndman, 1998;Perrin et al., 2019). ...
For decades, as evidenced in programming and research, the humanitarian community has recognised gender equality and equity as integral to effective programming and response. Drawing upon ninety-nine publications indexed on the Web of Science and Google Scholar, this paper explores available evidence on gender and crisis settings in Africa to synthesise and critically analyse what is being learned. We found that limited research and programming have explicitly aimed to have gender transformative impacts, and those that do fail to adequately declare or reflect on the biases and intricacies of aiming to transform social norms in complex sociocultural contexts. Additionally, this review examines the trend of the body of research, highlighting the affiliation of authors and the geographical areas of focus. Evidence shows that research in this area is dominated by scholars affiliated with institutions in the Global North, raising questions relating to knowledge production and epistemic injustice in Africa.
... 13 The trc has been the subject of widespread debate and criticism, which may be perceived not only as necessary, but as part and parcel of its reconciliation project. With regard to gender, it has been criticised for failing to uncover a full understanding of women's sufferings under apartheid (Ross 2003a, b, 2008, Borer 2009).14 Beth Goldblatt and Sheila Meintjes summarise this critique as follows: ...
... The contribution of gendered criticism of the trc to postcolonial literary trauma theory makes clear that gender matters when attending to victims and their trauma -be they real or fictional. The trc's failure to uncover the full extent of women's sufferings under apartheid (Ross 2003a, b, 2008, Borer 2009) has had severe and lasting consequences for women. The women who did not testify were not able to take advantage of either the psychological support services provided to statement makers or reparation grants (Goldblatt and Meintjes 1997, 15-16). ...
... What is more, the widespread use of sexual violence during apartheid and the way in which it functioned as a weapon of war have been left unacknowledged. Worst of all, the perpetrators of these crimes have not been held accountable (Borer 2009(Borer , 1179. This unacknowledged legacy of past violence has led to an acceptance of violence against women in the present (Goldblatt and Meintjes 1997, 14) or, in Borer's terms, to "a culture of sexual violence in South Africa" rather than "a culture of rights" (2009,1180). ...
... Focusing on individually perpetrated political violence leads directly to a forceful gender critique of testimony-gathering, since the Commission's definition of human rights abuses excluded the kinds of violations most commonly experienced by women. Moreover, in its initial planning, the SA-TRC adopted a blindly gender-neutral position (Borer 2009), a methodology singled out by Kleinman (2007) as most often ahistorical and disingenuous, and which merely serves to solidify the status quo of gender oppression. ...
... This in addition to a general absence of testimony from victims of sexual violence at these hearings-perhaps, as we noted, because there was no conceptualization of systematic sexual violence as a political act eligible for official testimony (Goldblatt and Meintjes 1997). Notably, no men applied for amnesty for crimes of sexual violence (Borer 2009). Overall, then, the women's hearings obfuscated continuities of violence against Black women in South Africa. ...
... This type of structural abuse affected a far larger number of people, and usually with greater longer-term consequences, than the types of violations on which the Commission focused (SA-TRC 1998). Yet despite its admission of failure re: gender, not one of the SA-TRC's 100 recommendations for societal reconciliation focused on improving women's rights in South Africa (Borer 2009). ...
Appeals to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) haunt most post-1990s institutional attempts to address historical injustice. Comparing Canada and South Africa, Nagy (2012) notes that “loose analogizing” has hampered the application of important lessons from the South African to the Canadian TRC—namely, the discovery that “narrow approaches to truth collude with superficial views of reconciliation that deny continuities of violence.” Taking up her important specification of the Canada-South Africa analogy, we expand Nagy’s recent findings by gendering the continuum of settler colonial violence in both locations and by outlining the implications of these TRCs for Indigenous and Black women in particular. In both the Canadian attempt to grapple with the legacy of residential schools and the South African effort to deal with a history of apartheid, institutional approaches to truth have been both narrow and androcentric. The simultaneous historical bounding and social consolidation of Indigenous experiences of abuse and injustice has thus produced a “double settler denial.”
... The patriarchal structure of the society is a dominant source of violence and suffering within the novel. Forced marriage is one of them (Borer, 2009). Having lost her mother, Mariam yields to her father's desire and marries a man who is twenty five years older than her. ...
... Against such a backdrop, the anti-feminine facet of war and different aspects of patriarchy including forced marriage, patriarchal terrorism, the burden of procreative blame, and the sense of male ownership constitute gender violence and domination over women (Borer, 2009;Hunnicut, 2009;Inhorn, 1996;Johnson, 1995;Piispa, 2002). Acceptance, as the dominant coping response of the heroes, conveys the heroes' passivity. ...
... In contrast, the anti-feminine facet of war and different features of patriarchy including forced marriage, patriarchal terrorism, the burden of procreative blame, and the sense of male ownership perpetrate violence and domination (Borer, 2009;Hunnicut, 2009;Inhorn, 1996;Johnson, 1995;Piispa, 2002). Hence, the patriarchal ideal of female subordination and male dominance underlies their vision as frail victim of violence. ...
... Days of Activism campaign to end violence against women and with the establishments of various working groups whose purpose is to examine the systematic challenges in regards to violence against women (Mkhize et al. 2010;Britton 2006;Hassim 2006). 11 Despite these steps forward, women in South Africa have found little relief despite the success of the women's movement due to the cultural backlash that has addressed women as targets of social control and as a means to reaffirm masculinity (Borer 2012;Swarr 2012;Mkhkize et al. 2010;Hassim 2006;Brownmiller 1975). 12 11 Outside of official state movements to end violence against women, there are any number of NGOs, nonprofits and CSOs that have made movements and efforts to end GBV. ...
... Anderson (2000) claims that South Africa's history has a direct impact on the current 'rape crisis' that it is facing. Many claim that the use of rape as a weapon of war is not new and was used freely during colonial South Africa, the proxy wars 13 , and apartheid (Borer 2012;Baaz and Stern 2009;Card 1996). Anderson (2000) contributes the brutal militarized culture of violence as well as a lack of legal structure that was present in South Africa for generations to the current paradigms of sexual violence while others contribute the high rate to myths and concerns over HIV/AIDS (Richter 2003;Jewkes et al. 2012). ...
... If lesbians are always at the crux of the discourse and discussion about "corrective rape" and violence, then what room is left for them to move from victim to survivor? 49 My results challenge the common framing of rape as response to Apartheid or simply as carried over weapon of war during peacetime (Moffett 2006;Anderson 2000;Borer 2012;Baaz and Stern 2009;Card 1996). While locating rape as a response to historical influences is crucial, limiting this to Apartheid era or to war/peace time excludes vital messages or beliefs that have been ingrained into popular knowledge/collective memory. ...
“Corrective rape,” an act characterized as a man raping a lesbian in an effort to turn her straight, is a growing problem in South Africa. Despite being hailed as the rainbow nation, South Africa has neglected to address incidents of discrimination and hate crimes perpetrated against lesbians. In this thesis, I use an intersectional frame to examine accounts of “corrective rape” in 95 articles published between 2009 and 2013 in 13 different South African newspapers. I begin by tracing the production and construction of “corrective rape,” in particular how the media discourse constructs the attacks and how it marginalizes the women who survive these attacks. Then, drawing from poststructural discourse analysis, I demonstrate how South African-ness is constituted around discourses of lesbianism and “corrective rape,” in particular how the media discourse constructs how views on lesbians and “corrective rape” are either antithetical to being truly South African or are key in establishing oneself a part of democratic South African culture. Finally, I offer some thoughts on the implications these findings have for the global discourse on lesbians.
... Schraiber (12) presented an outline and critical analysis of scientific studies on Violence and Health. On the basis of a nonexhaustive review, the construction of violence as a national and international field of knowledge and intervention is broached. ...
... Borer (12) mentioned that war is profoundly gendered has long been recognized by feminist international relations scholars. What is less recognized is that the postwar period is equally gendered. ...
Peace and war are important public dimensions. Therefore, in the present research, the Biblical verse concerning the peace and the war is described.
This research deals with various social and medical aspects of the dimensions related to the peace and the war such as the characteristics of the human warfare, the burden of war, the experiences, the attitudes, the health effects, and the strategies for the peace promotion.
The Research shows that the awareness of the peace and war has accompanied human during the long years of our existence.
... Reparations, whether symbolic or material, individual or collective, are not designed to address the root causes of the violence nor to transform gender relations. Borer (2009) identifies further that reparations and compensation are often tied to participation in legal proceedings so that many women who might have been eligible to receive reparations based on the harm they have experienced, do not receive it because they have been inhibited from testifying due to stigma against rape, fear for their safety or an unwillingness to undergo the trauma of testifying. This compounds existing economic disadvantage and dependence on male dominated structures of power and privilege. ...
... Studies of post-conflict societies consistently find high levels of violence against women including domestic violence and rape in such countries as South Africa, Kenya, Timor Leste and Sierra Leone (Nordström 2013;Scanlon and Muddell 2009). A number of scholars have drawn correlations between war trauma, breakdown of interpersonal and societal relationships, elevated alcohol and other drug use, lack of physical and social infrastructure for responding to community needs and the high incidence of violence against women tolerated in post-conflict societies (Pettman 1996;Borer 2009). 14 'El poder en el mundo formal: Entre el voto y la cuota'. ...
In this article, we examine the continuity of harms and traumas experienced by women before, during and after war and other mass violence. We focus on women because of the particular challenges they face in accessing justice due to patriarchal structures and ongoing discrimination in the political, economic and social, as well as legal spheres, and because of the gendered nature of the crimes and harms they experience. We use the four key pillars of transitional justice identified by the United Nations as a framework to analyse how these harms are addressed in the context of criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and institutional reform. We conclude that a gender-transformative approach to transitional justice that focuses on transforming psychosocial, socioeconomic and political power relations in society is needed in order to attain human rights for women and build a sustainable peace.
... What role does righting gender inequities play in postwar reconstruction?" (Borer, 2009(Borer, p. 1170 Were it not for the events of April-May 1994, Rwanda would be viewed as a 'typical' Sub-Saharan African country: land-locked, relatively poor, highly dependent on subsistence rain-fed agriculture, conflict-prone and experiencing slow growth. The genocide of 1994, however, in which at least 500,000 1 people were murdered in one of the starkest examples of government sponsored ethnic cleansing of the twentieth century, makes Rwanda's history a cruelly unique one. ...
... What role does righting gender inequities play in post-war reconstruction?" (Borer, 2009) Intimate partner violence is the most widespread form of violence against women in the world today (Krug, et al., 2002). The World Health Organization Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence conducted surveys in eleven countries and found that the percentage of women who reported having ever experienced intimate partner violence ranged between 15-71 percent (Garcia-Moreno, et al., 2005). ...
... What role does righting gender inequities play in post-war reconstruction?" (Borer, 2009) ...
... What role does righting gender inequities play in post-war reconstruction?" (Borer, 2009) The Economics of Peace and Security Journal, ISSN 1749-852X Finnoff, Intimate partner violence in Rwanda p. 15 © www.epsjournal.org.uk -Vol. ...
Patterns of gendered violence during civil conflict are among the least well-understood aspects of civil war, and even greater gaps in our understanding exist regarding the long-term patterns of gendered power and violence in countries affected by war. This article examines the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence, based on household-level data from the Demographic and Health Survey conducted in Rwanda in 2005. Three results stand out. First, there are significant differences in the prevalence of three different types of gendered violence: physical, emotional and sexual violence. Second, women who are employed but whose husbands are not experience more sexual violence, not less, as would be expected in conventional household bargaining models. This can be interpreted as reflecting 'male backlash' as gender norms are destabilized. Finally, there is a strong inter-district correlation between the post-conflict prevalence of sexual violence and the intensity of political violence during the genocide.
... The earlier transitional justice programs in Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and South Africa did not explicitly include gender-specific violence against women, thus limiting the scope of the truth commissions to capture and address these gendered crimes, as they were seen as outside the commission's mandate. These truth commissions were particularly subject to significant criticisms for its extemporized approach to gender harms, focusing exclusively on past political violence, undermining as it does, other coterminous situations that foster ongoing psychological and structural violence, and the representation of women, principally as witnesses to violence against men, which has significant effect on the historic context, reparative policy, and justice intervention in gender studies, as was quite evident in the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Borer 2009;Kusafuka 2009;Goldblatt and Meintjes 1996). ...
... The ensemble's intra-action with Mabatho's story bled into a deep and resounding history of Black women's experience in South Africa. Tristan Anne Borer (2009Borer ( : 1180 explains that in post-apartheid South Africa, 'patriarchy 9. The famous theme song from the 1981 film Chariots of Fire was composed by Vangelis. ...
The author draws attention to Playback Theatre’s ability to translate stories that speak to social injustice in South Africa. When the Playback Theatre ensemble intra-acts with stories, it encourages affective consciousness through social artistry. This is crucial in highlighting the potential of Playback Theatre to stage stories that steer away from reductionist portrayals. The author undertakes a diffractive analysis of two stories within the performance that concerns the contestation of gender roles and patriarchy in South Africa. Narrative reticulation and intra-actions are employed to reveal how performative translations in Playback Theatre provide an opportunity to magnify issues pertaining to social justice.
... Gender-based violence is complex and refers to a vast range of violations perpetrated against women in defence of patriarchal traditional values, gendered hierarchy and sex-role expectations that uphold society's control over feminine and gender-nonconforming persons (Grootboom, 2016;Kiguwa et al., 2015;Mazars et al., 2013;Mkhize et al., 2010;Mpani, 2015). Gender-based violence against women is endemic in South Africa (Borer, 2009;Durbach, 1999;Gqola, 2015;Plaatje, 2007). Studies by organisations such as the Medical Research Council and Gender Links report that 1 in 4 adult women in the general population have experienced gender-based violence (see, Mpani & Nsibande, 2015). ...
Globally, increased domestic violence against women during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns concerned researchers, policymakers, governments and the civil society. In South Africa, an increased risk for gender-based domestic violence against women during the lockdown period was reported by various sources including the national gender-based violence call centre (GBVCC), the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the civil society. Covid-19 lockdown encouraged spatial distance: a public health measure. This measure inadvertently created social distance and social disconnection. Public life, which is frequently a coping mechanism and an escape for some women and girls at risk of domestic violence, was curtailed by the lockdown rules that forbade movements. Informal sources of help for victims of abuse were limited due to closed economic activities, and community-based helping services for domestic violence were not permitted to open. Some victims of domestic violence struggled with public transportation to access informal help, visit the police, social workers and other sources of help. Some organisations offered online and telephone services. The increased risk of gender-based domestic violence during the lockdown is indicative of poly-violence that women are exposed to. The risk of the domesticated poly-violence during crisis periods could be averted by focussing on risk reduction for all forms of violations against women.
... However, women's increased presence in these processes has had only a limited impact on their outcomes. Scholars have shown how provisions of peace agreements and mandates of transitional justice instruments overlook or marginalize women's needs, interests, and entitlements (Borer 2009;Bell and O'Rourke 2010;Haynes, Ní Aoláin, and Cahn 2011;Sandole and Staroste 2015). The failure to bring about gender-just peace in contexts where women are represented in the peacemaking process poses a significant puzzle (Castillo Diaz and Tordjman 2012;Coomaraswamy 2015;Paffenholz et al. 2016). ...
Scholars have pinpointed that women's underrepresentation in peacemaking results in gendered outcomes that do not address women's needs and interests. Despite recent increased representation at the negotiating table, women still have a limited influence on peacemaking outcomes. We propose that differences in female and male speeches reflected in the gendered patterns in discourse during peacemaking explain how women's influence is curtailed. We examine women's speaking behavior in transitional justice debates in the post-conflict Balkans. Applying multimethod quantitative text analysis to over half a million words in multiple languages, we analyze structural and thematic speech patterns. We find that men's domination of turn-taking and the absence of topics reflecting women's needs and interests lead to a gendered outcome. The sequences of men talking after men are longer than those of women talking after women, which restricts women's deliberative space and opportunities to develop and sustain arguments that reflect their concerns. We find no evidence that women's limited influence is driven by lower deliberative quality of their speeches. This study of gendered dynamics at the microlevel of discourse identifies a novel dimension of male domination during peacemaking.
... Durante su implementación, no se facilitó el abordaje de temas como la violencia sexual. Como resultado las sudafricanas silenciaron sus experiencias, a pesar de que fueron ellas las que mayoritariamente participaron aportando a la comisión testimonios referidos a lo que vivieron sus seres queridos(Borer, 2009;Ross, 2006, Theidon, 2008. De igual forma, señalaRoss (2006), la participación de las mujeres en la resistencia al apartheid fue invisibilizada.Gobodo-Madikizela (2005), por el contrario, sostiene que la participación de las mujeres en la CVR fue significativa y lo hicieron desde diferentes niveles: como comisionadas, como miembros del staff, como testimoniantes y como miembros de organizaciones de la sociedad civil que ayudaron con la identificación de víctimas y las motivaron a participar. ...
La justicia transicional ofrece mecanismos para garantizar la verdad, la justicia, la reparación y la no repetición a las víctimas de abusos contra los derechos humanos perpetrados durante regímenes dictatoriales y conflictos armados. Se trata de un marco jurídico que ha cobrado auge desde las últimas décadas del siglo veinte y, particularmente en Colombia, se ha constituido en una herramienta para afrontar los períodos posteriores a las negociaciones con grupos armados ilegales en los últimos veinte años. Así lo corrobora, entre otras, la presente revisión de 129 estudios y debates sobre experiencias de Comisiones de la Verdad entre 1997 y 2019.
Palabras clave: Comisiones de la verdad; Derecho a la verdad; Víctimas, Justicia Transicional.
... However, women's increased presence in these processes has had only a limited impact on their outcomes. Scholars have shown how provisions of peace agreements and mandates of transitional justice instruments overlook or marginalize women's needs, interests and entitlements (Bell and O'Rourke, 2010;Burnet, 2008;Haynes et al., 2011;Hogg, 2009;Sandole and Staroste, 2015;Borer, 2009). The failure to bring about gender-just peace in contexts where women are represented in the peace-making process poses a significant puzzle (Castillo Diaz and Tordjman, 2012;Paffenholz et al., 2016;UN Women, 2015). ...
The essays in this thesis explore diverse manifestations and different aspects of political text. The two main contributions on the methodological side are bringing forward novel data on political actors who were overlooked by the existing literature and application of new approaches in text analysis to address substantive questions about them. On the theoretical side this thesis contributes to the literatures on lobbying, government transparency, post-conflict studies and gender in politics. In the first paper on interest groups in the UK I argue that contrary to much of the theoretical and empirical literature mechanisms of attaining access to government in pluralist systems critically depend on the presence of limits on campaign spending. When such limits exist, political candidates invest few resources in fund-raising and, thus, most organizations make only very few if any political donations. I collect and analyse transparency data on government department meetings and show that economic importance is one of the mechanisms that can explain variation in the level of access attained by different groups. Furthermore, I show that Brexit had a diminishing effect on this relationship between economic importance and the level of access. I also study the reported purpose of meetings and, using dynamic topic models, show the temporary shifts in policy agenda during this period. The second paper argues that civil society in post-conflict settings is capable of high-quality deliberation and, while differing in their focus, both male and female can deliver arguments pertaining to the interests of broader societal groups. Using the transcripts of civil society public consultation meetings across former Yugoslavia I show that the lack of gender-sensitive transitional justice instruments could stem not from the lack of women’s 3 physical or verbal participation, but from the dynamic of speech enclaves and topical focus on different aspects of transitional justice process between genders. And, finally, the third paper maps the challenges that lie ahead with the proliferation of research that relies on multiple datasets. In a simulation study I show that, when the linking information is limited to text, the noise can potential occur at different levels and is often hard to anticipate in practice. Thus, the choice of record linkage requires balancing between these different scenarios. Taken together, the papers in this thesis advance the field of “text as data” and contribute to our understanding of multiple political phenomena.
... 7. ICTJ 2016. On the gender dimension of the TRC operations in South Africa see work by Goldblatt and Meintjes 1997;Borer 2009;and Durbach 2016. 8 14. ...
De Jorio examines some of the limits of the global system of law in addressing the dramatic increase in gender-based violence in Mali since the 2012 political and security crisis. The global system of law is the legal regime promulgated by UN agencies and human rights organizations, which is intended to shape legal reforms at the national level in order to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and to promote women's rights and wellbeing. Despite national and international efforts to implement anti-discriminatory legislation and prosecute perpetuators of violence, such institutional efforts have mostly been ineffective. This article identifies some of the current problems with the global system of law, relating to the narrow scale of the geopolitical analysis and the attempted reduction of culture to ahistorical “customs.” It begins to explore some of the opportunities afforded by transitional justice systems such as the TJRC in accommodating Malian citizens' demands for historical clarification and justice. De Jorio examine certaines des limites du système juridique mondial déployé pour faire face à l'augmentation significative de la violence basée sur le gendre depuis le début de la crise politique et de sécurité au Mali en 2012. Le système juridique mondial est le régime juridique appliqué par les agences des Nations Unies et les organisations de défense des droits de l'homme, destiné à orienter les réformes juridiques au niveau national afin d'éliminer toutes les formes de discrimination à l'égard des femmes et de promouvoir leurs droits et leur bien-être. Malgré des efforts déployés aux niveaux national et international pour appliquer cette législation antidiscriminatoire et poursuivre les auteurs de violences, ces efforts ont pour la plupart échoué. De Jorio identifie, dans l'échelle de l'analyse, la plupart du temps nationale, et dans la réduction de la culture aux « coutumes » anhistoriques, certaines des limites du système juridique mondial actuel. Elle commence à explorer des possibilités offertes par les systèmes de justice transitionnelle tels que la Commission Vérité, Justice, et Réconciliation (CVJR) pour répondre aux demandes des citoyens maliens en matière de clarification historique et de justice.
... Roles,7/8 (61). Borer, T. (2009). Gendered War and Gendered Peace: Commissions and Post-conflict Gender Violence: Lessons From South Africa. ...
Based on an in-depth empirical research conducted between
2009 and 2010, this report seeks to convey critically important firsthand information which should be taken into serious consideration
when formulating the future directions of Finnish asylum and return
policies. It should be highlighted that the movement of asylum
seekers should be observed through a gender lens. Refugee mobility
follows particular pathways and travel trajectories which are
cleared by earlier generations of mobile men, women and children.
Mobility is informed by shared memories and narratives, as well as
commonly upheld attitudes and assumptions. The nature of present
day asylum migration can be assessed only by recognizing that the
asylum seekers have significant information concerning political
and gendered mechanisms that emerge hand in hand with violent
conflicts and displacement.
... However, some of the suggested reforms have been incorporated in newer versions of truth commissions. For example, Borer (2009), reviewing criticism of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, noted that violence against women was not taken seriously compared with other crimes, that women were not given necessary protections as they testified and that reparations were not woman friendly. In the end, few women came forward, no perpetrators of rape asked for amnesty and the report and recommendations barely mentioned women. ...
Feminist criminology needs to renovate concepts based explicitly on the experiences of mainly white women in the global North. It also needs to globalize its research agendas and enhance its conceptual horizons, to include the distinctively different gendered patterns of crime and violence that occur across the global South and North, and not only during peacetime but also war and conflict. The chapter takes two issues—violence against women during war and civil conflict and innovative approaches to preventing violence from the global South—to illustrate how feminist criminology can contribute to Southern criminology’s project of democratizing knowledge transfer between the global North and South.
... Some truth commissions, particularly South Africa's TRC, have been criticized for failing to be sufficiently attentive to the needs of women subjected to abuse or harm. 188 Although many women testified before the TRC, few talked about their own experiences of violence and abuse. Those who did testify found that commissioners seemed unwilling to explore their stories. ...
... The gendered nature of peace has been also less emphasized than the gendered nature of war [10]. The emphasis has been on the marked gender differences in victimization patterns, where women are primarily the victims of sexual and other gender based targeted violence [11] that likely continues well after the conflict has ended [12]. ...
... In addition, the examination of gendered experiences of resilience is essential following the recognition that the empowerment of women is crucial to achieve reconciliation in the aftermath of con£ict and to facilitate sustainable local development (United Nations, 2006). O⁄cial discourses of peace and con£ict continue to view women primarily as victims, rather than as social actors with agency (Borer, 2009), despite the active presence of women as liberators, leaders and caretakers of families and war torn communities, such as can be seen in Burundi (Idriss, 2010), Sri Lanka (Bandarage, 2010) and Uganda (Abel & Richters, 2009). In the case study presented in this paper, the aftermath of the Peruvian armed con£ict (1980^2000) o¡ers a similar example as indigenous Quechua women have been actively involved in the social repair process of their communities. ...
Research into survivors of war has largely focused on suffering, rather than on the resilience, of survivors. This paper presents a cross-sectional survey that examined the factors contributing to the resilience of indigenous Quechua women (n = 151) in the aftermath of Peruvian armed conflict (1980-2000). Regular participation in civic associations, and the migratory status of returnees after the conflict, were associated with higher resilience. In contrast, low levels of education, unpaid occupations and experience of sexual violence during the conflict were all associated with lower resilience. These findings suggest that social policies that revitalise civic society and reduce gender inequalities within education and employment are crucial to enhance women's resilience in post war zones. In this study, the resilience of Quechua women, in particular their association with political activism, offers an unambiguous example of courage and active resistance to extreme adversity.
... The gendered nature of peace has been also less emphasized than the gendered nature of war [10]. The emphasis has been on the marked gender differences in victimization patterns, where women are primarily the victims of sexual and other gender based targeted violence [11] that likely continues well after the conflict has ended [12]. ...
The long lasting resilience of individuals and communities affected by mass violence has not been given equal prominence as their suffering. This has often led to psychosocial interventions in post-conflict zones being unresponsive to local realities and ill-equipped to foster local strengths. Responding to the renewed interest in resilience in the field of violence and health, this study examines the resilience and post-traumatic responses of Indigenous Quechua women in the aftermath of the political violence in Peru (1980--2000).
A cross-sectional study examined the relationship between resilience, post-traumatic responses, exposure to violence during the conflict and current life stress on 151 Quechua women participants. Purposive and convenience sampling strategies were used for recruitment in Ayacucho, the area most exposed to violence. The study instruments were translated to Quechua and Spanish and cross-culturally validated. Data was analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis. A locally informed trauma questionnaire of local idioms of distress was also included in the analysis.
Sixty percent of women (n = 91) were recruited from Ayacucho city and the rest from three rural villages; the mean age was 45 years old. Despite high levels of exposure to violence, only 9.3% of the sample presented a level of symptoms that indicated possible PTSD. Resilience did not contribute to the overall variance of post-traumatic stress related symptoms, which was predicted by past exposure to violence, current life stress, age, and schooling (R2 = .421). Resilience contributed instead to the variance of avoidance symptoms (Stand beta = -.198, t = -2.595, p = 0.010) while not for re-experiencing or arousal symptoms.
These findings identified some of the pathways in which resilience and post-traumatic responses interrelate in the aftermath of violence; yet, they also point to the complexity of their relationship, which is not fully explained by linear associations, requiring further examination. Age and gender-sensitive health care is considered critical almost fifteen years after the end of the conflict. The notable resilience of Quechua women---despite exposure to a continuum of violence and social inequalities---also calls for enhanced recognition of women not only as victims of violence but also as complex social actors in the reconstruction of post-conflict societies.
Transnational justice is the judicial and nonjudicial response used by societies to address widespread human rights violations, mass atrocities, or other forms of collective trauma. In nations transitioning from autocratic regimes, those emerging from periods of civil conflict and war, and those coming to terms with large‐scale violations of international law, these processes help societies reestablish the rule of law, hold perpetrators accountable and bring justice to victims, and heal communities through reconciliation. Addressing gender justice is a key facet of the transnational justice, since women and girls are particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses, including sexual and gender‐based violence (SGBV).
The present chapter reviews experimental research investigating the complexities and phenomena influencing legal decision-making involving an outcome measure (e.g., verdict, guilt rating, and/or sentence recommendation) in cases of adult rape. Because rape is a crime subject to social bias, myths, and cultural beliefs, rape cases are vulnerable to the influence of extralegal factors (i.e., not within the scope of the law) when making judgments. Major theoretical perspectives (e.g., the Story Model, the Commonsense Justice model, and the theory of Generic Prejudice) concerning legal decision-making and rape are presented, as well as methodological details of existing legal decision-making research. Coverage of prior research involving extralegal factors includes investigations of the influence of mock juror characteristics (e.g., mock juror gender), acquaintance rape (including victim and defendant characteristics and contextual factors such as intoxication), intimate partner rape, non-heteronormative rape, and legal issues that arise in both a criminal trial context (e.g., sentencing) and outside of this context (e.g., civil trials). The chapter concludes with a discussion of avenues for future research and the practical implications of research investigating perceptions of rape cases.KeywordsRapeVictimCourtJusticeJurorJuryConsentTrialSexual assault
This chapter turns to the potential contribution of quasi- or non-judicial post-conflict justice processes in complementing international criminal justice for addressing the needs of victims of conflict-related sexual violence. Drawing on insights from the previous chapters, it first analyses how effective redress for victims of sexual violence in post-conflict settings should be conceived in light of the complexity of the victims' experiences and the legacy of these crimes in communities. The discussion emphasises the potential transformative effects of truth-seeking processes and other community-based transitional justice measures on the often challenging social dimension of sexual violence as a weapon of war. The author argues, however, that whilst it is necessary to integrate these crimes into domestic transitional justice processes, this should be done alongside embedding appropriate measures to facilitate the participation of victims without running the risk of being exposed to further harm.
This chapter provides a broad outline of the field of transitional gender justice post-World War Two, surveying key legal, political and humanitarian developments, particularly those pertaining most directly to women. It traces the optimism of women’s rights advocates throughout the 1990s with prosecutions of sexual violence at the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, the strong global support for UN Security Council Resolution 1325, an increased focus on gender in humanitarian interventions, through to growing disillusionment as the lives of women in conflict zones remain marked by violence, displacement, exclusion and injustice despite significant shifts at the international level. This chapter provides a broad survey of major standpoints on the capacity of transitional justice to transform the lives of women.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), beyond their undeniable differences in dealing with post-conflict justice, were influenced by the same “rape as a weapon of war” paradigm in their approach to the abuses of the women’s rights. This article examines literary explorations of this paradigm, i.e., how its interpretative patterns have been appropriated, adjusted, and reshaped in As if I Am Not There (1999) by Slavenka Drakulić and in Disgrace (1999) by John M. Coetzee. It points out how literature in post-conflict societies of the 1990s has been used successfully to problematize the victim status in war and conflict situations and to give voice to the silenced aspects of women’s rape stories, as well as to signal the limitations of the main legal and commission discourses that rely on a too rigid conception of sexual violence against women.
Crime fiction centrally engages with questions of justice, yet often from the perspective of the detective or the criminal, thereby eliding the (conventionally female) victim. In the face of South Africa’s appalling levels of gender-based violence, some crime writers are seeking new ways to write the female victim. This article asks whether the genre allows for a foregrounding of the victim’s trauma and her resources. Drawing from studies on the gender dimensions of bearing witness, from postcolonial trauma theory and from scholarship on the ethics and aesthetics of representing the violated female body, it argues that the crime thrillers examined here expose and revise, yet at times also reiterate, gendered and racial assumptions about women as victims, women's suffering and the representation thereof.
In recent years, the transitional justice field has become increasingly concerned with ensuring meaningful participation from a wide range of actors. In response, a burgeoning scholarship has emerged, which aims to understand the interests and needs of these stakeholders, most notably women and children. Noticeably absent from this research is an examination of youth interests as distinct from children’s. Instead, the conflict identities of youth are most often conceived as inextricably tied to those of children. As a result, the narrow victim/perpetrator binary remains the dominant identity construction employed for understanding their involvement in conflict and transitional justice processes. Drawing on the case of the Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this article reveals that youth are more than passive subjects in the reconciliation process. It demonstrates that the interactions of youth with truth and reconciliation commission processes allow youth to exercise agency, and thus challenge the dominance of the victim/perpetrator identity construct. The article thus proposes an alternative way of framing youth participation, whereby the identities of youth in transitional contexts are represented as diverse and malleable.
This chapter examines the unique contributions made by youth participants at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the Solomon Islands. In doing so, it challenges the rigid victim/perpetrator binaries traditionally employed to describe young people’s participation in transitional justice. These identity descriptors become problematic when they fail to account for the realities of youth’s conflict experiences. This chapter argues that youth are political actors with the capacity to contribute to transitional justice in diverse and surprising ways. It suggests that understanding their interests and motivations, distinct from children, provides a more holistic and inclusive narrative of youth in transitional contexts. In the Solomon Islands, the inclusion of youth hearings at the TRC provided young people with a forum to construct their justice narrative, distinct from children. Yet, the Final Report’s chapter on children held steadfast to the rigid victim/perpetrator classifications. This chapter draws on the language used by different stakeholders at the TRC to highlight the complexities associated with creating a holistic narrative of youth participation. With this in mind, it examines the challenges associated with the emergence of competing conflict narratives, specifically, the stories told about youth and those by youth.
This chapter explores female ex-combatants of the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), the main anti-apartheid movement and leading party in present day South Africa. Drawing on narrative interviews with female ex-combatants — conducted in Cape Town during the first half of 2014 — this chapter presents findings that have remained absent in the larger debates on South African conflict and transition.
Based on extensive field work in Ayacucho, the area most affected by the past armed conflict in Peru (1980–2000), this practice note outlines some of the contributions to justice and reconciliation made by Quechua women in post-conflict Ayacucho and hypothesizes a number of reasons why these contributions have not been recognized to the same extent as their suffering.
The telephone rings. Your daughter-or sister, or friend-is on the other end, describing how her partner abused her and asking for your advice. What would you tell her? To call the police, press charges, seek a protective order or divorce? The chances are good that one of the options that immediately came to mind involved the legal system. Even if your initial response was not legal, it is virtually certain that if your daughter or sister or friend chose to disclose the abuse to anyone else, she would come into contact with the legal system at some point. While shelter, counseling, and other services are available for women subjected to abuse, no other intervention is as frequently invoked as the law-indeed, access to other services may only be available if a woman subjected to abuse1 pursues some sort of legal remedy against her partner. Women subjected to abuse are steered toward the legal system, assured that the system will keep them safe, offered a proscribed set of choices reflecting prevalent notions of what an appropriate intervention in a case involving domestic violence should be, and expected to choose one of those options.
This article examines the narratives of 19 East Timorese women who were coerced into sexual relationships with members of the Indonesian security forces during the 24-year Indonesian occupation. Close attention to the key themes emerging from these stories helps to deepen understandings of women's diverse experiences of the conflict and postconflict periods, and sheds light on the gendered possibilities and limits of truth commissions. By destabilizing the therapeutic assumptions of truth commissions, these women's narratives also assist in developing a more contextualized, locally grounded and long-term approach to the pursuit of gender justice in Timor-Leste and elsewhere. © The Authors (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Power-sharing arrangements have lasting effects on societies where they are put in place, as they can not only allocate access to power to particular groups in the short to medium term but also shape the legal and institutional landscape of the post-conflict country. There are potential risks thus to the protection of human rights inherent in power-sharing arrangements. First, those given the most significant benefits in power-sharing arrangements are usually the protagonists to the conflict, who may have committed serious human rights abuses and will resist accountability for past abuses as well as the legislation of human rights protections. However, it is also possible that power-sharing arrangements will include provisions which may help to promote human rights, such as those setting aside seats in executive cabinets or legislatures, or posts in security forces, or autonomous regions, for minority groups or indigenous people, or all but the final type of provision for women. In principle, such provisions can help to secure greater representation of traditionally underrepresented groups, who in turn might be in a position to promote greater protection of the rights of those groups. This article considers the possible effects, positive and negative, of power-sharing arrangements on rights of women, minorities and indigenous people.
Feminist criminology grew out of the Women’s Movement of the 1970s, in response to the male dominance of mainstream criminology – which meant that not only were women largely excluded from carrying out criminological research, they were also barely considered as subjects of that research.
This article examines the issue of accountability for wartime sexual violence within the UN agenda on women, peace and security. The study offers a unique contribution to the growing body of literature on Resolution 1325 by reviewing how the issue of accountability for sexual violence has been treated in peace agreements signed since its adoption in October 2000. The author triangulates data collected from peace agreements with interviews with elite peacemaking practitioners to establish that justice for victims of sexual violence continues to be side-lined. The central argument of this article is that the lack of attention to accountability for sexual violence is symptomatic of larger problems within the UN agenda which is underpinned by a masculinized perception of accountability limited to sanctions and punishment and a narrow focus on sexual violence as a weapon of war. The author argues that unless a holistic approach to justice and accountability and a broader concern with gender-based violence are adopted, the UN's aim of ending impunity for wartime sexual violence will remain unfulfilled.
Objectives:
In comparison to other traumatic events, the impact of a childhood during war on resilience later in life has been seldom examined. The aim of this study was therefore to examine the long term outcomes of post-traumatic responses and resilience of a sample of adult Indigenous Quechua women, who were girls or adolescents during the Peruvian armed conflict (1980-1995).
Methods:
The study instruments (Harvard trauma questionnaire part I and IV; Connor-Davidson resilience scale; life stress questionnaire) were translated to Quechua and cross-culturally validated. A cross sectional survey design was used in 2010 to collect data from a convenience sample of 75 participants (25-45 years old) in Ayacucho, Peru, the region most affected by the conflict. Data was examined using hierarchical regression analyses.
Results:
Participants reported extreme exposure to violence (e.g., sexual violence, torture, combat, death of family members, and forced displacement) during the armed conflict, but surprisingly, only 5.3% reported a current level of symptoms that may indicate a possible post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Resilience scores and number of years exposed to conflict as a child were not associated with PTSD symptoms; instead only the degree of exposure to violence, and current level of stress contributed to the variance of PTSD-related symptoms. Conversely, resilience and current stress contributed to the variance of trauma symptoms when measured by local idioms of distress.
Conclusions:
Findings should be interpreted with caution, due to limitations in the content validity of instruments, risk of inaccurate recall, use of individual explanations of distress (such as PTSD) for collective experiences of violence, use of non-indigenous frameworks to examine Indigenous resilience, and other methodological concerns. The study however highlights the high degree of traumatic exposure of these former war children. While the prevalence of potential PTSD was astonishingly low in this sample, a number of women still suffer from significant distress two decades after the traumatic events. Therefore, post-conflict interventions should renew efforts to foster the resilience of marginalized populations disproportionately targeted by violence and advocate for enhanced protection of women and children in current armed conflicts.
The influence of gender on patterns of ethnic violence in ex‐Yugoslavia has commanded considerable international attention. This article acknowledges the groundbreaking role of feminist scholarship in bringing the gender variable to the forefront in analyses of political and interpersonal violence. However, feminist applications of gender frameworks are to some extent constrained by feminism's normative commitments. The present article argues for a more balanced and inclusive understanding of the role gender plays in conditioning the actions and experiences of men and women alike, in the Balkans war and other conflicts. Towards this end, a detailed evaluation of gender‐specific and gender‐selective violence in ex‐Yugoslavia is presented, with particular attention to the group that appears to constitute the majority of victims ‐ males between the ages of eighteen and sixty‐five. The article concludes by stressing the importance of the gender variable in analysing ethnic and political violence, and suggests that a more nuanced approach to this variable's operations would shed important light on ethnic violence in ex‐Yugoslavia and worldwide.
Organized rape has been an integral aspect of warfare for a long time even though classics on warfare have predominantly focused on theorizing ‘regular’ warfare, that is, the situations in which one army encounters another in a battle to conquer or defend a territory. Recently, however, much attention has been paid to asymmetric warfare and, accordingly, to phenomena such as guerrilla tactics, terrorism, hostage taking and a range of identity-related aspects of war such as religious fundamentalism, holy war, ethnic cleansing and war rape. In fact, war rape can be taken as a perfect example of an asymmetric strategy. In war rape the soldier attacks a civilian (not a fellow combatant) and a woman (not another male soldier), and does this only indirectly with the aim of holding or taking a territory. The primary target here is to inflict trauma and through this to destroy family ties and group solidarity within the enemy camp. This article understands war rape as a fundamental way of abandoning subjects: rape is the mark of sovereignty stamped directly on the body, that is, it is essentially a bio-political strategy using (or better, abusing) the distinction between the self and the body. Through an analysis of the way rape was carried out by the predominantly paramilitary Serbian forces on Bosnian soil, this article theorizes a two-fold practice of abjection: through war rape an abject is introduced within the woman’s body (sperm or forced pregnancy), transforming her into an abject-self rejected by the family, excluded by the community and quite often also the object of a self-hate, sometimes to the point of suicide. This understanding of war rape is developed in the article through a synthesis of the literature on abandonment (Agamben, Schmitt) and abjection (Bataille, Douglas, Kristeva) and concomitantly it is argued that the penetration of the woman’s body works as a metaphor for the penetration of enemy lines. In addition it is argued that this bio-political strategy, like other forms of sovereignty, operates through the creation of an ‘inclusive exclusion’. The woman and the community in question are inscribed within the enemy realm of power as those excluded.
Human Rights Quarterly 20.2 (1998) 348-378
Currently, the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, is trying indicted war criminals in the Bosnia-Herzegovina war. During this conflict an estimated 20,000 women endured sexual assaults in the form of torture and rape. Although these atrocities were committed on all sides of the warring factions, by far the greatest number of assaults were committed by the Serbs against Muslim women, though Catholic Croats were targeted as well. While in past conflicts rape was sometimes considered an inevitable byproduct of war, and thus largely ignored when it came to punishing the perpetrators, the Bosnian conflict brought the practice of rape with genocidal intent to a new level, causing an outcry among the international community. Evidence suggests that these violations were not random acts carried out by a few dissident soldiers. Rather, this was an assault against the female gender, violating her body and its reproductive capabilities as a "weapon of war." Serbian political and military leaders systematically planned and strategically executed this policy of ethnic cleansing or genocide with the support of the Serbian and Bosnian Serb armies and paramilitary groups to create a "Greater Serbia": a religiously, culturally, and linguistically homogenous Serbian nation. This article will examine two main issues. First, in section two the Serbs' systematic use of rape camps with the specific intent of impregnating their victims is investigated, along with the cultural, political, and religious foundations that support this usurpation of the female body. The third section will then analyze the "secondary victimization" of these women and the various responses implicitly supporting the Serbian practice and objective.
In a traditionally patriarchal society, the Serbian government, military, and Orthodox church have explicitly formulated a perception of the female gender and its role and function within society. Essentially, the female is reduced to her reproductive capacities in order to fulfill the overall objective of Serbian nationalism by producing more citizens to populate the nation. Limiting womanhood to a single physiological quality in this way proves nondiscriminatory in that not only are Serbian women thus perceived, but non-Serbian women are as well. This attitude has certainly had an impact, conscious or unconscious, on the overall perception and treatment of women, playing a part in the establishment of rape camps and the usurpation of women's bodies to achieve ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps the traditional role of the Serbian woman is most clearly depicted by the Mother of the Jugovici, the epic heroine from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, who, in spite of the death of her nine sons in the battle with the Turks, did not weep. Her courage, self-sacrifice, altruism, and, most of all, her fertility, have been utilized to inspire and serve as a paradigm for Serbian women and their responsibility as mothers of the nation. According to this twisted reasoning, the necessity of reproduction guarantees Serbian perseverance against Her aggressors and establishes a greater Serbia, "Mother-Homeland." To shirk one's duty of reproduction amounts to antipatriotism and treason. The assertion of a Sarajevo woman who claimed that she planned to "fire off one baby every year to spite the aggressors" reflects the power of this myth and its message. Serbians have waged this propaganda campaign of women's national and social reproductive responsibility on both political and religious fronts with remarkable success, as is evidenced in legislation "encouraging" women's reproductive responsibilities.
1. Governmental Policy and Demography
In October 1992, powerful organs in Serbian society published a document entitled "Warning," focusing on demographic issues. Signed by the Serbian ruling party, the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS), the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Serbian Orthodox Church, this document highlighted the imbalance in terms of growth and renewal of various ethnic groups. In particular, "Albanians, Muslims and Romans [sic], with their high birth rate, are beyond rational and human reproduction." The SPS conference adopted this document, and the Serbian Parliament enacted a resolution promoting "population renewal," seeking to stimulate the birth rate in some areas while suppressing it in others. Perhaps it is...
This essay surveys feminist scholarship and praxis on transitional justice, examining its ongoing contribution to the conceptualization and design of transitional justice mechanisms. We examine some of the gender implications of a specifically ‘transitional’ theory of justice. The essay concludes by proposing that feminist theory should focus on how transitional justice debates help or hinder broader projects of securing material gains for women through transition, rather than trying to fit a feminist notion of justice within transitional justice frameworks.
The book traces the emergence of 'women' as a category in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.It draws from research conducted on the Commission's Human Rights Violations Hearings and in Zwelethemba, a small town in the Western Cape. It explores the production of gender difference in human rights work and examines the silences, gaps, elisions and possibilities that emerged from the Commission's process. It remains the only full length monograph on the topic and is widely cited.
Postconflict disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe aimed at addressing problems of postconflict peace building. Differences among designs and designers of these subregional postconflict cases are well known. An overarching goal was the pursuit of peace and stability through the management of weapons and sustainable reintegration of ex-combatants. In all the different cases, DDR fell short of meeting this target with different impacts. Through an integrative focus sensitive to policy and context, this article draws on these shortcomings to contribute to this rapidly growing and internationally recognized important subfield of international relations.
Accusations of Albanian rape of Serbs in Kosovo became a highly charged political factor in the development of Serbian nationalism in the 1980s. Discussions of rape were used to link perceptions of national victimisation and a crisis of masculinity and to legitimate a militant Serbian nationalism, ultimately contributing to the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. The article argues for attention to the ways that nationalist projects have been structured with reference to ideals of masculinity, the specific political and cultural contexts that have influenced these processes, and the consequent implications for gender relations as well as for nationalist politics. Such an approach helps explain the appeal of Milošević's nationalism; at the same time it highlights the divisions and conflicts that lie behind hegemonic gender and national identities constructed around difference.
The first volume of the International Center for Transitional Justice's new Advancing Transitional Justice Series. Published with the support of the International Development Research Centre. What happens to women whose lives are transformed by human rights violations? What happens to the voices of victimized women once they have their day in court or in front of a truth commission? Women face a double marginalization under authoritarian regimes and during and after violent conflicts. Nonetheless, reparations programs are rarely designed to address the needs of women victims. What Happened to the Women? Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations, argues for the introduction of a gender dimension into reparations programs. The volume explores gender and reparations policies in Guatemala, Peru, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Timor-Leste.
In the years since the first reports of mass rapes in the Yugoslavian wars of secession and the genocidal massacres in Rwanda, feminist activists and scholars, human rights organizations, journalists, and social scientists have dedicated unprecedented efforts to document, explain, and seek solutions for the phenomenon of wartime rape. While contributors to this literature agree on much, there is no consensus on causal factors. This paper provides a brief overview of the literature on wartime rape in historical and ethnographical societies and a critical analysis of the four leading explanations for its root causes: the feminist theory, the cultural pathology theory, the strategic rape theory, and the biosocial theory. The paper concludes that the biosocial theory is the only one capable of bringing all the phenomena associated with wartime rape into a single explanatory context.
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